The Physicist's Birthday

Possibly the title of this tale is a misnomer since the story is not about the party I attended, but rather the drive to the party. No matter.

When I was going to UT, I sent a friend of mine—who for the purposes of this story will be known as J—a prank email from the site Virtual Crack. Virtual Crak is a parody of the parody-worthy site Virtual Flowers. J worked at NASA at the time, and he unfortunately opened the Virtual Crack email at work.

"I opened that email when I had a particle physicist leaning over my shoulder," J complained.

"Well, I never told you to open it at work," I retorted.

"At least he got a kick out of it."

"That's good."

"I didn't really expect him to," J said. "I mean, he has a really dry sense of humor. Bone dry. Desert dry. Like the Sahara. You'd like him."

"Um, thank you."

I wondered about the physicist for a while, but we didn't meet until a few months later. After I'd graduated UT, J and a friend of his invited me to a party where they demonstrated an eight-foot tall Tesla coil they'd built. The physicist attended the party, and so we met. Some months later, his fiancée invited me to his birthday party. J and I arranged to meet at J's workshop and then carpool to the party.

I should have known that the day was not going to go well when I lost the shop. I drove up and down Spring Cypress five or six times before finally finding the damn building, and I irritably parked and bided my time until J arrived. I'd read an unhealthy percentage of Machiavelli's The Prince by the time I spotted J's Jeep rumbling up the drive. With a blood-curdling screech, I leapt out of the way just in time to avoid being flattened. J smirked as he climbed out of the vehicle; I glared and decided to pretend to ignore it. I sighed heavily as I noted that it was already one o'clock, the time we were supposed to have already arrived at the party on the exact opposite end of town.

Not to be deterred, J and I made a frantic series of phone calls to find out if we could still make it. Upon hearing that we could just barely maybe catch the tail end of the party, we took off. We didn't have time to bother with maps; we'd figure it out along the way with the aid of my cel phone and J's roommate's apparent lack of anything better to do than help us two pussies out from the comparative comfort and safety of his living room. J's roommate—and his family—worried me, but his home life, troubled as it was by events involving divorcing parents and a shit fetish, seemed like heaven from the hell that was the passenger seat of J's Jeep.

J and I hopped into the Jeep, and J peeled out of the shop and backed at breakneck speed into the gas station next door. J disturbingly left the engine running as he filled his gas tank and washed the windows of his Jeep by sloshing some of the contents of his water bottle over them. Actually, I think the decision to wash the rear window may have been an accident, if the clunking sound of the water bottle falling from its post on top of the spare tire and hitting the glass was any clue. I decided to ignore it—wondering vaguely just exactly how many things I was going to have to ignore that day—and we vaulted onto Spring Cypress once again, trying to figure out just exactly where the hell we were going. J chose that precise moment to tell me that he hadn't yet purchased the physicist's birthday present. I made a mental note not to host any parties for myself any time soon; not if I wanted to receive a better than sub-standard present, anyway.

As we sped off towards I-45, I realized that we may not have been dressed appropriately. True, I used to live at the Waterford Marina, the marina that housed the restaurant where the party was held, but that had been fifteen years ago, and the area had been yuppified considerably since then. I cast anxious glances at our attire and wondered whether we might get kicked out of the party. We were rather scruffy-looking—J was wearing faded jeans and needed a shave; I was wearing steel-toed boots, black-and-white striped socks, and a particularly hideous pair of olive-green utility pants. I shrugged, thinking that anybody who tried to kick us out would get a dose of the steel-toed boots.

We were now approaching Beltway 8. J headed for the booth marked "E-Z Pass," which a quick glance at his windshield proved he did not possess. "Smile for the camera," J told me as we zoomed beneath the security camera. I worried fleetingly that we might get ticketed. Reading my mind, J replied, "Not in this car. No license plates." I felt strangely uncomforted, even more so when another glance at the windshield revealed that he also possessed neither registration nor inspection sticker.

Barreling down Beltway 8 at speeds that rivaled those normally found only on the Autobahn, I checked feverishly out my window at regular intervals for any signs of cops. A few police cars passed us; none pulled us over. I recalled that ninety miles per hour was in fact the standard on Beltway 8. Not the speed limit; just the standard.

We then left the Beltway—I'm not sure if we actually exited or merely vaulted over the barrier; to J, it was all the same—and began our assault of I-10. I tried not to panic, imaging what lay ahead. I needn't have worried. With J driving the way he did, the lengthy part of our journey that should have been I-10 was gone in a flash. I blinked curiously, wondering where the legendary eight-lane sprawl had gone. It occurred to me later that I probably hadn't noticed the pavement flying past because I was too sidetracked by J's "reassuring" explanation that the strange rattling noise coming from my side of the car was "just" a loose part that connected the axle and the wheel. I gulped and kept quiet, trying desperately to quash my nightmarish visions of flipping end-over-end off the highway into a Dumpster.

610 now loomed ahead of us. J began to fidget about finding a Barnes and Noble to purchase a book for the physicist. I felt smug, remembering how I'd purchased a decorative wooden leaf on a small stand two days before. As we drew ever nearer to Clear Lake, we began fiddling with directions and phone calls again. We located a Barnes and Noble, but J failed to execute the exit for the parking lot correctly, and he decided to put his four-wheel drive to use. He four-wheeled over a ditch in a failed attempt to catapult us into the parking lot. He then decided, for the first time that day, to do something legal, and he got back onto the pavement, to my mixed relief—at least on the grass, he'd been forced to slow down. I remarked, "Carpooling with you isn't just a bargain; it's an adventure." J laughed politely while undoubtedly thinking to himself something along the lines of needing better friends. He then maneuvered the Jeep toward the parking lot. "Hang tight," he instructed me, throwing his arm protectively toward me. I expressed a concern that he keep both hands on the wheel. His driving was bad enough with two hands; I didn't dare think what it would be like with only one hand. So we careered over the curb and into the parking lot, running many a stop sign as I held onto my seat with both hands in a death grip. We swerved sharply into a parking space and came to an abrupt, screeching halt. J leapt from the vehicle and I muttered something about having lost count of how many laws we'd broken since the journey began.

We charged toward the store and rampaged through it, undoubtedly causing a lot of damage as we desperately searched for the perfect book. We found something, selected a card to go with it, and approached the cash register, shoving a few small children out of our way. I slipped J my membership card so that he could purchase the book more cheaply; he passed it back to me surreptitiously under the counter; no one noticed except another small child, whom we ignored. Then, book and card in hand, we got the hell out. I tried not to notice the rent-a-cop circling the parking lot. I wondered fleetingly what we must have looked like: a couple of scruffily-dressed people hauling ass out of a shopping center and sprinting toward what was unquestionably the shittiest car in the parking lot—no license plates, no registration, no inspection—which we then hotwired right in front of the rent-a-cop, who, predictably, did nothing. Awesome.

And so our adventure recommenced. Back on to the highway, but not, mercifully, for long. Equally mercifully, we did not have any accidents, a feat nothing short of miraculous since J was trying to sign the birthday card at every red light. Moments later, we hurtled into the Waterford Marina, narrowly avoiding another cataclysmic series of accidents. Spying the physicist's car in the parking lot, J deduced that the party was not over yet. We launched ourselves from the Jeep as from a high cliff and tore toward the restaurant, making a note of the shitty piece plywood serving as a wheelchair ramp along the way. We burst inside and began peering around, looking for any sign of the physicist, ignoring the confused-looking waiter who offered to help us. Then we spied the party goers—they were in a private room, behind a pair of double French doors, which J approached. I tailed nervously behind, feeling rather embarrassed at how unfashionably late we'd arrived. Everyone inside looked up and saw us outside the doors, greeting us with a loud round of applause, which quickly turned to a loud round of derisive laughter as J struggled to open the door and failed. Opting to minimize my own embarrassment, I did not help him; I merely pointed and laughed from a safe distance.

Somehow, that was the perfect ending to our journey.